Ville de Québec & Commission de la capitale nationale honour the QCT

Shirley Nadeau (QCT journalist and copy editor) and Deputy Mayor Michelle Morin-Doyle are all smiles standing in front of the historical plaque unveiled this morning outside the QCT’s palais de la presse.

The scene – a convivial sun-soaked ceremony on the corner of rue Buade and rue de Trésor, albeit a very noisy corner.

Those gathered – Deputy Mayor Michelle Morin-Doyle, Françoise Mercure (president and director general of the Commission de la capitale nationale du Québec), Françoise Paradis (Conseillère à la diffusion du patrimoine), Anne Corriveau (president of the city’s Comité de commémoration), Normand Gouin (owner of the building about which all the fuss was being made), and a full contingent of Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph journalists and other media.

The reason – a historical plaque being placed on the QCT’s palais de la presse. In 1907, the owners of the QCT’s predecessor The Daily Telegraph commissioned Georges-Émile Tanguay to design a true palais de la presse. The building Tanguay designed, like City Hall and many other heritage buildings he designed here in Quebec City, stands over 100 years later as a testament to the importance of what took place within its walls. From 1925 to 1949, it was the home of the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph. Today, the building’s owners seek a new vocation for it and have visions of the structure blending into rue du Trésor as an artists’ complex.

Historian Charles André Nadeau reminded the audience that before the QCT’s predecessor The Quebec Gazette, Quebec had never had a newspaper. Indeed, the bilingual Quebec Gazette was the first newspaper in New France. Effectively, the plaque placed on 1, rue de Trésor pays homage to the living heritage the QCT stewards – our newspaper’s beginnings as the founding media of our city and our province.

As Deputy Mayor Morin-Doyle said during her address, “The Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph is intricately woven into the social fabric of the Anglophone community.” Equally significant, Morin-Doyle emphasized that the QCT “has served and will continue to serve as the link that keeps us [the Ville de Québec] connected with the community [...] It's the common thread that keeps our community alive.”